


Supernatural ficlet grab-bag

by stele3



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I seriously don't even know what's in here. Proceed at your own risk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Supernatural ficlet grab-bag

**Flying Solo**

 

Bobby thinks about it sometimes – usually when he first hears the Impala’s low growl outside. The sound used to be harbinger for the arrival of John Winchester and he could expect to spend the next few days (or week, or however long John needed to get what he was after) in some state of irritation. John had a way of bringing that out in people just by striding into a goddamned room, looking like he had to kick down every door instead of just knocking. Dragging those two boys behind him

 

These days, though, it’s just Dean. Dean, who comes up to his door and knocks quietly, who takes the beer that Bobby keeps cold. His daddy gave him the Impala months ago, said every good hunter needed his own wheels.

 

Bobby thinks that’s a crock of shit. Hunting alone is never a good idea; you need someone to salt and burn your damn bones, if nothing else.

 

Dean knows, too, but he does it anyway. He grins when he says he’s gone solo, like it’s a gift instead of a burden; like Bobby can’t see the shake in his hands when he talks about Sam at Stanford or John heading north to handle a Wendigo.

 

Like Bobby doesn’t know him better. Hell, he knows this kid better than his old man; God knows John left his sons here so many times when they were growing up that they’re practically Bobby’s, too.

 

Bobby tries not to think too hard on that, especially when Dean cuts him that narrow-eyed look from the corner of his lashes, the one that makes Bobby’s gut wind up for the punch.

 

The longest stint was four months, a whole summer, when Sam had been twelve and Dean fifteen. The oldest Winchester boy had ripped through puberty like lightning, getting right through all the embarrassing crap and moving on to the good stuff, like the endless sex drive. Bobby still wasn’t sure where that huge supply of giggly girls came from (it wasn’t like this county was a big vacation getaway for the bikini-wearing teenaged set); he did his best to regularly throw condoms at Dean’s blond head and make sure that Sam stayed out of the living room at night. Bobby always did his best by these two; he'd advised Dean through a nasty stint of being bullied in grade school (he was a small kid before his growth spurt) and had been the first to counsel Sam on the ways of talking to girls. He drew the line at sex talks, though.

 

If Bobby’s learned one thing, it’s that Fate is one ironic bitch.

 

Ten years later, Dean finishes his beer and gets up. All the shakiness breaks free and he crosses the room in a big damn hurry, like he’ll loose his nerve and his momentum if he stops. And yeah, Bobby should probably be a better man… should say no and let the kid down easy or something.

 

He hasn’t before. He’s pretty sure that if he ever does say no, it’s not something he’ll get to say again. Dean’ll pull away, will shake himself apart. He already looks braced for it, eyes dark and scared in the half light.

 

They don’t kiss; that means something, but Bobby’s never examined any of it too closely. He doesn’t think about the way Dean’s eyes get huge or the way he’s almost desperate to please Bobby. It isn’t his standard MO; Bobby’s no pervert, but the house is pretty damn small and his quarters sit right next to the living room, where Dean would take the girls. He’d throw things at the walls, irritable with sleep, when they got loud enough to wake him; it always took a while to get back to sleep and he knew every sound that Dean made when he was with the girls.

 

They’re completely different than the sounds Dean makes with him. That means something, too. It _all_ means a lot more than Bobby wants to know. 

 

In bed, Dean will let Bobby do anything to him: Bobby’s pushed the boundaries a couple of times, seeking that fine edge of Dean’s willingness, trying to make him be the one to say no and stop this. Only to wind up fascinated and alarmed at the way Dean looks up at him. Like he’s begging to be fucked. Begging to please. Ready and willing for anything, as long as Bobby keeps touching him, keeps letting him come back for more.

 

He always arrives alone, wearing his solitude like an albatross around his neck. Bobby should say no, should be a better man; he’s just not sure what that entails. He’s not the one Dean wants to please, wants to love him, but judging from the empty light at Dean’s side, the best this kid’s gonna get is an irritable old coot in a mechanic’s yard who gives him a beer and a bed and a solid fuck.

 

So he lets Dean take him to bed and he lets the kid who coulda been _his_ fucking kid whimper and beg for something he can never get from Bobby. And he lets Dean leave the next morning, heading back out in his growling car. Flying solo. 

 

 

 

 

 **Highway 140** – Winnemucca to Medford

 

The sound of water doesn’t wake you: it’s white noise against the roof, pouring down across windows and doors. When the clouds shift away and the rain stops, the world feels too quiet and you slide back to consciousness. You’d fallen asleep somewhere in the drive to Oregon with your forehead tipped against the window.

 

The car isn’t moving. You blink and sit up.

 

Dean is a few feet down the road. It’s a two-lane stretch of blacktop and he stands astride the yellow center line, hands on his hips. You’d laugh at his stance – _Hercules atop his pillars_ – but then your gaze goes past him.

 

He didn’t bother pulling the car over to the shoulder, not that it would have matter. From the Impala’s bumper to the blurry horizon, the road remains utterly straight and empty, though it swoops down into a kind of small valley ahead, affording you the best view of its relentless, unswerving path forward. It lies across the gray-brown shrub land of northern Nevada like a black cut, the shortest distance from point A to point B; you twist behind you and look back toward the mountain country, where the road comes down from higher elevations in the distance.

 

You straighten around and look at Dean.

 

He doesn’t move, straight-backed with his hair and shirt flattened to him by the rain; a little moisture probably feels wonderful in the summer heat. It was a thunderstorm that has since moved to the east, smudging the horizon there with gray streaks of rain and sparking with quick white flashes. To the west, though, the sun has already started to poke its jealous head through the clouds. Dean stands between them, storm and sun, with his back to you.

 

When he turns around, there’s something in his face that makes your breath hitch. His expression is turned inward and lit up with some kind of strange excitement, an unidentifiable delight taken from the road and the sky. 

 

He must have thought that you were still asleep, because when he looks up and finds you watching him, he stops short. Your heart pangs when the unguarded happiness disappears behind the carefully-walled exterior; it clearly wasn’t something that he wanted you to see, because his face flits through half a dozen emotions before settling squarely on embarrassment.

 

You look away and pull your door handle, stepping out onto the road. The scent of wet dust rushes over you and you can’t help but smile: you’ve always loved that smell, used to lean your head out of the back windows when Dad steered the car towards a desert storm. Even through your sneakers you can feel the road’s heat, stored energy from a life spent naked to the sun’s rays. There’s no shade for miles, no trees, just the low-lying brush and sage bushes that sprout determinedly from barren soil.

 

You walk around to the front of the car, enjoying the bit of wind left in the storm’s wake. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Dean put his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched; you have to bite the inside of your cheek because it’s the perfect image of a sullen schoolboy, angry at himself for being caught.

 

You study the landscape, then say, “Pretty.”

 

He’s immediately on the defensive. “It was coming down pretty hard earlier. Didn’t think I should drive when I couldn’t frickin’ _see_.”

 

You nod and accept that at face value. After another minute of stubborn silence, Dean scuffs his foot. “Better be gettin’ on again, if you’re done with the sight-seein’.”

 

You cut him a sideways look. “You’re the one who stopped to look.”

 

He scoffs. “Did not. Told you, I didn’t wanna drive into a tree.”

 

“Bullshit. What trees?”

 

You watch his face, the way he struggles with it, and you wonder for the billionth time if he’ll ever forgive you for leaving him. You can remember a time when he would have _dragged_ you out of the car to share whatever it is that he gets from this place, this straight road that goes on and on forever. You can almost _see_ the two of you, Dean barely legal to drink and you barely legal to vote, standing out on the blacktop together.

 

Now, he tries so hard to keep it from you and you wonder what it will take, whether you’ll ever be able to regain the trust you lost when you went away, when you left the psychic-twin-mindmeld the two of you had. You’d left to be your own person and you were, you are; you’d made yourself into someone strong, determined, maybe a little jaded, capable of – _yes_ – surviving on your own outside the shadow of your father or Dean.

 

The price you paid was Dean’s trust. Oh, he’d trust you with his life… but not his soul.

 

You’re still not sure it was worth it. Not sure at all.

 

“C’mon,” Dean grunts, turning back to the car. “It’s another three hours to Medford.”

 

You stall a few moments more, staring out at the endless road, trying to see what Dean sees in it. The car roars to life behind you pointedly and you sigh then turn away.

 

 

 

**In Deference to Mortality**

 

Sam calls him from the hospital and tells him to come around back; Bobby already feels pretty queasy, but he sucks it up and backs the pickup into the red zone, blinkers on, trying to look casual. It’s dark, a point in their favor, but the hospital’s bright lights still make him nervous.

 

When they come out, Sam’s in scrubs, complete with a mask over his face; the legs are too short and his jeans stick out the bottoms. He pulls the gurney behind him, and the gurney pulls Dean behind it, the three of them in a daisy chain. Dean looks like walking death, but all the tears are in Sam’s eyes.

 

They don’t greet him and Bobby doesn’t move to help as they lift the corpse into the pickup’s bed. Sam strips off the scrubs and leaves them atop the gurney then gets in the back with Dean and his father.

 

The sun comes up while they drive back to Bobby’s; he glances in the rearview mirror from time to time, trying to avoid the potholes. All three are silent and still, two out of choice and one in deference to mortality. They’ve wrapped John in a sheet, a sterile white hospital shroud; a corner has come loose and flaps in the wind.

 

Sam sits on a wheel well with his limbs going in every which direction, crying and swaying with the truck’s motion. Dean sits cross-legged on the truck’s bed, face blank and eyes glassy. Bobby had left a few of their things, whatever he could skim off the Impala’s shattered interior, in the back; he notices that Dean’s got that leather jacket back on, collar turned up against the cold.

 

Sam goes on crying; Dean goes on staring; John goes on being dead. _The Winchester men_ , Bobby thinks, and swears to himself in the milky dawn light.


End file.
